


It's Called Bonding, Gunderson

by squirenonny



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Fluff, Gen, Sass, dorks being friends, includes scenes from before Pidge comes out to the others so, minor misgendering, she/her pronouns for pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: How things never change even when everything's changing.
Or: Lance and Hunk bully Pidge into having a movie night at the Garrison, then continue the tradition in the Castle of Lions.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toondoon1010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toondoon1010/gifts).



> Part of the Voltron Fanworks Exchange 2016. For toondoon1010, who requested the Garrison trio when it was just the three of them, and how Pidge coming out changed things (but also didn't.)

“Okay, no, see, that was totally _your_ fault, Hunk,” Lance said, pointing an accusatory finger at Hunk’s chest.

Hunk pulled back, slapping a hand to his chest in melodramatic betrayal. “Lance, how dare you. After all we’ve been through…”

Pidge rolled her eyes and quickened her pace, but she wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid getting drawn into a fight. Lance’s  hand slid across her shoulders and pulled her close—uncomfortably close. “Pidge agrees with me. Don’t you, Gunderson?”

Pidge disentangled herself from Lance’s grasp and kept walking. “Number one, I’m too busy to do this right now. Two?” She turned smirking at Lance. “It was totally your fault, Lance.”

It was almost worth it just to see Lance’s jaw drop in utter shock. Behind him, Hunk was doubled over, laughing so hard he’d started coughing. “Gunderson! What—how—why—Shut up, Hunk! You’re the one who fried our heat shields!”

“In a deep space sim! It wouldn’t have killed us if you had stopped yelling at me long enough to pay attention to the debris in front of you.”

“Yeah, well, how was I supposed to focus with you puking in the corner?”

Pidge rolled her eyes, fighting down the urge to scream, and sped up. The sooner she could get back to her room, the sooner she could start decoding the deep space transmission she’d picked up last night. She’d recognized one word—Voltron, the same thing she kept hearing in  the transmissions—and she was hoping that this would be the message that would let her crack the code.

“Woah, woah, woah! Gunderson! Where do you think _you’re_ going?”

She was going to scream. Honest to god, she was going to scream bloody murder if she had to spend another week on a training squad with these two while she waited for answers to drop into her lap. “Sorry, guys, I’ve got a project to work on.”

“Oh!” Hunk appeared beside her, his nose buried in a planner. “Is it that Tactical Basics presentation? Cause I was thinking we could bounce some ideas off each other, I-I-I mean if you’re up for that. It’s just that, well, I’m not real great at presentations and I thought if we teamed up it might...”

“It’s not,” Pidge said as Hunk paused to take a breath. “That project. It’s not that project. It’s a different one. Independent studies.”

“Oh? Cool.” Hunk closed his planner. “What’s the topic?”

Pidge’s mind blanked. “ Uhhhhh. Code breaking.” She winced. “For the Communications Officer. Specialty. Track. Thing.” Wow. Way to play it cool. Pidge wanted to find the nearest wall and bang her head against it until she forgot what training squads were.

“Booo-ring.” Lance sauntered up on Pidge’s other side, leaning in like he was going to pull her into another “friendly” hug. She leaned away, then slipped around to the other side of Hunk. Lance scowled at her. “Dude. Gunderson, my _man_. It’s Friday! No one in their right mind is doing homework on a Friday night.”

P idge hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders,  wishing it didn’t rankle so much to hear Lance address her like that .  _This was your choice. This is for Dad and Matt._ She forced levity into her voice. “Lance, you say that every day.”

Scoffing, Lance shoved his hands into his pockets. “Because it’s  _true_ .”

“Whatever. Listen, I really have to go. I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”

“Wait, hold on,” Hunk said. “Aren’t you coming to dinner?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“That’s not very healthy, Gunderson,” Lance said. “Growing boys need their protein.”

Pidge gave him  an exasperated glower, but he was incessant, stalking Pidge down the halls and harping on how  _maybe you wouldn’t be such a shrimp if you ate your vegetables_ . Hunk backed him up for about three minutes, then started to back off,  _then_ started apologizing to Pidge for every other sentence out of Lance’s mouth.

_What did I do to deserve this squad?_

Pidge didn’t let herself think about that for too long, because the list of Illegal and/or Unethical Things Pidge Holt Has Done was alarmingly long. It started with hacking government computers, ran a red light through stealing Garrison property, and kept on cruising all the way down the line to breaking curfew  nightly .

Finally, she cracked. “Fine! Okay. Fine. I’ll have dinner with you in the cafeteria. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Lance said, giving a flowery bow and gesturing Pidge toward the cafeteria. “After you, good sir.”

Pidge grit her teeth and brushed past him. “Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

She should have known it wouldn’t end with dinner. Pidge wolfed down the gooey mac’n’cheese and  a  bruised apple, but when she tried to leave halfway through a  _riveting_ tale of Lance’s  _legendary_ rivalry with some dropout ( _why_ was that something to brag about?) he called her rude and whined until she sat back down.

Then, somehow, dinner became movie night, and Pidge found herself back in Lance and Hunk’s dorm room shooting longing looks at the door as Lance popped a disc in the DVD player. He wouldn’t let Pidge see what movie it was, but he’d promised her three times on the way back to the room that she was going to love it.

By the time the previews were over, Hunk had returned from the kitchenette in the basement with a bowl of popcorn. Lance produced Mountain Dew and orange soda from a minifridge under his desk, and the y all piled onto Lance’s bed, Pidge trapped once more in the middle. It was like they knew she was plotting her escape.

Pidge glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past six—way too early to plead exhaustion. Maybe she could guzzle her orange soda, run to the bathroom, and just...not come back. Yeah. That would work. Monday would be horribly awkward, but Monday was decidedly not today, and that made it better than suffering through two hours of—what? She tried to guess what sorts of movies these two liked, but all she could come up with was “maybe space movies?” (Which honestly didn’t sound that bad. Maybe they were watching the Martian. She could suffer Lance and Hunk for the sake of her favorite sass cannon.)

The menu came up, and Pidge groaned aloud. “ _Signs_ ?  _Really_ ?”

Lance pressed a finger to her lips and shushed her. “Shyamalan is a master of the art.”

“Have you seen this before?” Hunk asked.

“No,” Pidge said. “My brother spared me by watching it with his friends and telling me exactly how terrible it was.”

“Perfect,” Lance said, tossing back a handful of popcorn, half of which dropped onto his shirt and the pillow he was sitting on. “Virgin eyes. Always a plus.”

P idge sank down on the bed, counting the seconds until  she could make her escape. And, oh  _god_ had Matt been right. From the first glimpse of the painfully self-important opening credits, Pidge knew she was going to hate this movie.

Pidge covered her eyes.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Lance said, startling Pidge into looking at the screen. The characters stood in the middle of a crop circle, mediocre acting on full display—though somewhat obscured by Lance’s groaning. “You call _that_ a crop circle?”

“Talk about lazy aliens,” Hunk agreed. “Go back to art school, Yoda!”

“I’m calling Hoax right now.”

“I’ll bet Mel Gibson did it for media exposure.”

A startled laugh escaped Pidge, drawing the attention of both her companions, who glanced at her, then each other.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “I think he figured out the game.”

Hunk grinned.

* * *

“That’s their alien?” Pidge asked, throwing her hands in the air. “ _Seriously_? Did they  already blow the special effects budget on that shitty crop circle? Oooh, look at this scary slightly elongated human silhouette!”

She could have ranted straight through the “action” sequence  that followed  except that a few minutes later, with a truly frightening amount of enthusiasm, Hunk and Lance yelled, “It’s time for an ass-whooping!” in perfect  sync with the movie.

Pidge raised an eyebrow as she cracked her second can of orange soda. “How many times have you guys watched his movie?”

Lance glanced at Hunk, who quickly stuffed his mouth with popcorn. Lance turned back to Pidge, laid a hand over his heart, and said with as much dignity as he could muster, “I’d tell you, but I don’t want you to think less of me.”

* * *

“This cop is terrible at her job.”

“Most government officials are,” Pidge muttered, making Lance snort into his Mountain Dew. “What?” she asked innocently. “It’s true. Have you _seen_ Iverson? Man makes this cop look like Sherlock Holmes!”

Lance and Hunk were too busy laughing to argue.

* * *

“New drinking game: do a shot every time the camera focuses on the millions of water glasses scattered around the house.”

* * *

“I call bullshit!” Lance shouted, chucking popcorn at the TV as a crowd of Brazilian children crowded around a window, shouting in Portuguese and then switching suddenly into English for the audience’s convenience. “ _No one talks like that, asshole!_ ”

H unk was laughing so hard he almost fell off the foot of the bed.  Then the alien appeared, and Pidge actually  _shrieked_ with delight,  “Oh my god it’s bigfoot!”  and  H unk  hit the floor with a _thump_ .  Lance tossed a pillow down to him and crammed more popcorn in his mouth as though in retaliation for the ‘Is behind!’ line.

* * *

The climax of the movie involved a lot of screaming, laughter, and more popcorn on the floor than in their mouths. Pidge’s sides were sore by the end of it, her cheeks wet with tears.

Lance ejected the disc and flashed her a grin.

“Better than homework?” he asked with all the confidence of an egomaniacal fighter pilot.

“I don’t know...” Pidge said. “I do love staring at nonsense for five hours straight.”

Hunk snorted from his nest on the floor. “Much better to only stare at nonsense for two hours.”

“I thought that was implied.”

Lance’s grin turned into a pout, and he reached out to pull Pidge into a headlock. “Very funny, you little brat.”

Wri ggling out of his hold, Pidge stuck out her tongue. “Takes one to known one.”

“It was fun,” Hunk said, probably hoping to appease Lance. “Really. What do you say, Pidge? Wanna make a habit of it?”

Pidge was surprised to find herself agreeing without a moment of hesitation. It was only later, halfway back to her own dorm room, that a thought hit her, stopping her mid-stride. She’d been at the Garrison for almost a year now, every waking moment spent searching for her dad and Matt. She’d kept up in her classes, unwilling to draw Iverson’s attention, and talked with her classmates just enough to fade into the background.

Making friends had never been a part of her plan.

It was nice, though. Watching movies. Making fun of movies. It had been a long time since she’d had that much fun.

* * *

Three months passed, and things changed. Pidge, Lance, and Hunk didn’t get a chance to continue their new tradition; three days after watching  _Signs_ ,  they found  Shiro in the desert,  helped Keith rescue him,  and  wound up at the center of the battle for the fate of the universe.

Somethings, however, never changed. Not even if you were sitting in a flying alien castle in deep space, decoding Galra transmission while your giant psychic robot lion purred behind you.

“Oh my God, Gunderson, _how_ are you still  finding ways to do homework?”

Pidge didn’t even look up as Lance burst into the Green Lion’s hangar, Hunk trailing after him. This had become a kind of ritual for them, even before the rescue mission that had ended with the paladins scattered across the universe. Since reuniting, Lance had only become more persistent.

“This hardly qualifies as homework, Lance,” Pidge said, tweaking the parameters of her code-breaking program. “Zarkon’s planning something, and we _have_ to get ahead of him.”

“Yawn,” Lance said, draping himself across the back of Pidge’s chair.

Hunk sat on the edge of the desk. “Did you just  _say_ the word yawn?”

“No,” Lance said.

Pidge snorted. “He also called me Gunderson, so I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what comes out of his mouth.”

Lance shot upright, clutching at an imaginary arrow through his heart. “Pidge. Ow. I thought that was our thing?”

“You calling me my fake name?”

“Yes!” Lance flung his arms up, then crumpled, sagging against Pidge’s back. She jerked her arm back so her elbow dug into his armpit and he yelped, leaning more of his weight onto her. “Besides, it’s your own fault for picking a fake name that’s ten times as fun to say as _Holt_.”

Pidge couldn’t really argue with that.

“So, what are you working on besides code-breaking?” Hunk asked, leaning forward. “Need any help?”

It probably said something about Pidge’s habits that Hunk hadn’t had to ask if she was multitasking. “Well,” she said, pushing back her chair (coincidentally knocking Lance over in the process). “I was thinking about trying to enhance Green’s scanners--”

Lance, who hadn’t bothered to get up from where he lay sprawled on the floor, cut her off with a drawn-out groan that could have doubled as a foghorn. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

He looked up at her and pouted. “No. You two can be nerdy together when the rest of this castle isn’t already conspiring against me.”

Pidge looked at Hunk for an explanation, and he shrugged. “Keith and Shiro are training in the maze, and Coran tried to drag us into scrubbing out the showers down in the old staff quarters.”

“Which are _super_ gross, by the way,” Lance put in, raising a finger in the air. “There’s enough mold down there to feed a small horse.”

Hunk opened his mouth, paused, and looked down at Lance. “What kind of horses are you talking about? Because last I checked, horses don’t eat mold.”

“Space horses do. Maybe. I think?” Lance’s pointing finger wavered, and his brow furrowed. “I mean you can’t prove there _aren’t_ mold-eating space horses out there somewhere.  We’ve already seen sentient robot lions, living planets, haunted castles, flaming rock rain.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow, propping her arm on the back of her chair. “Okay, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered flaming rock rain.”

Lance sighed heavily. “It’s an Altean thing. Coran told me about it once.” He let his hand drop, arm draping across his face. Pidge recognized the signs of homesickness washing over Lance. He fell silent, and Pidge exchanged a helpless look with Hunk, who looked almost as subdued as Lance.

It was time for an intervention.

Pidge saved her progress on the Galra transmission, then closed out of the program. “You know… I have M. Night Shyamalan’s complete filmography downloaded on my laptop.”

Hunk’s head swiveled toward Pidge, a grin growing on his face. From the floor, Lance’s wary eyes watched Pidge from the shadow of his elbow. “ _Illegally_ downloaded?”

Pidge scoffed. “As if I’d spend real money on something I can find online for free.”

Lance still didn’t move.

“I have _The Last Airbender_...”

That finally startled a laugh out of Lance. “Oh  _hell_ yes.” He leaped to his feet and snatched Pidge’s laptop off the desk. “So where are we doing this thing?  Your room? My room? Rec room?”

Pidge pried her laptop out of Lance’s hands. “ _Or_ we could do it in the Green Lion. Coran won’t look there if he wants to make you scrub showers.”

"I like how you think, Gunderson.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Shut up and get in the lion.”


End file.
